


Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock, Say the Clock and the Countdown

by WhyWhyNot



Series: Stepfather would be the closest word but it doesn’t quite fit [40]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Bombs, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25505368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot
Summary: Taylor helps as much as she can.
Series: Stepfather would be the closest word but it doesn’t quite fit [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785541
Comments: 18
Kudos: 78





	Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock, Say the Clock and the Countdown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gerbilfriend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerbilfriend/gifts).



Things go fast once they reach the Rig.

There are people, more than she expected, and it makes sense, the Rig is too big to only have the Protectorate heroes in it, and they’re moving fast around her. Too fast.

(They make her think of an anthill. Everyone running, and everyone knowing what they have to do.)

“Stay here while they take care of Agnes, Taylor. It’s… It’s going to be be alright.” Says Colin. Says Armsmaster.

He’s gone before she can answers.

‘Here’ is a small, empty room, with white walls and metal chairs and a door leading to a bathroom. A waiting room.

Things go fast once they reach the Rig, and then slow.

There’s blood on Taylor’s arms. Agnes’s blood.

She steps in the bathroom to wash it away.

When Colin comes back, he’s wearing Armsmaster’s armor, and when he raises a hand toward her, he looks so much like a stranger she takes a step back.

He leaves again, and Taylor is alone in the empty white room. 

The door is locked.

(It makes sense. Whatever her relationship to Colin, to _Armsmaster_ , is, it would be a bad idea to let a civilian to wander through the Protectorate headquarters.)

Bakuda. The bombs.

Taylor wants to _help_ , but _how_? She’s locked alone in this room, and even if she wasn’t, Colin is gone, she’d had to out herself to a stranger for them to let her go.

(It would be irresponsible to let a teenage girl run off on her own in the middle of a city-wide bomb alert.)

Taylor is _trapped_.

Trapped, but not powerless.

She can, barely, but she can, feel the bugs in the Boat Graveyard on the edge of her range.

(This is where Agnes left her bomb.) 

Taylor gathers crabs on the ocean floor, and brings them to the coast, and then uses her bugs to search for people, mostly homeless, through the Graveyard, and the crabs to lead them out.

(She can’t do anything to stop Bakuda or to defuse the bombs, but she can make sure this specific one doesn’t hurt anyone, and it’s already something.)

Someone comes to take her to another white room, but in this one there are machines, and a bed, and Agnes asleep in it.

Taylor holds Agnes’s hand and keeps watching the Graveyard. The clock on the wall slowly counts the minutes.

It’s 2:18 a.m. when the bombs go off.

**Author's Note:**

> For plot reasons, I am putting the Rig significantly closer to the Boat Graveyard.


End file.
